A Subaltern Protagonist’s proposition of International Law
Every discourse requires a critical approach to its functioning and international law should be no exception. Two years ago, when I and my co-author Prof. Swati Singh Parmar traversed into a journey to write a “textbook” on Public International Law and Legal Theory through the prism of a third world approach, our effort was to offer a non-European account of international law. Our journey of exploring the works of TWAIL thinkers have finally culminated into our recent book ‘An Introduction to International Law’ (India: Thomson Reuters, 2021). The book is an attempt to bring together references that are non-European and a symbolic non-European book cover, an attempt to orient the disoriented European culture of the ‘civilised’ international law.
Many academic researchers and students are unfamiliar with the neologism — ‘TWAIL’. As Makau Mutua points out, TWAIL is not a recent phenomenon. It is an academic confrontation against the colonial movement. In his famous paper ‘What is TWAIL’, Mutua argues that “TWAIL is a response to decolonization and the end of direct European colonial rule over non-Europeans. It basically describes a response to a condition and is both reactive and proactive. It is reactive in the sense that it responds to international law as an imperial project. But it is proactive because it seeks the internal transformation of conditions in the Third World.”
Considering the geographical south’s expanding economic and political significance, its under-representation and under-participation in the discourse of international law and legal theory is a paradox. The lack of local context in international law has been plaguing the culture of academic exploration and research in third world countries. The book is an outcome of decolonisation of mind and self-determination in terms of exploring what third-world literature really holds to offer for the global academic community. Prof. Prabhakar Singh, penning the “Foreword” of the book writes, “[Authors] attempt to bring to us a much fuller and a more inclusive international law textbook. It foments a footnote revolution that seeks to nourish the text with a Third World sensibility”.
I am a subaltern protagonist who firmly believes that the academic power and influence of the geographical south would certainly translate into global governance power to create norms and institutions. As I have argued elsewhere, “the current Eurocentric dominance in international legal theory is partly due to coloniality and the west-centralism have shaped a structure of the global governance model that is exclusive and unequal.” This textbook was an attempt also to expose how the under-participation of third-world literature has influenced the construction of modern international law.
Writers from the geographical south have gained intellectual traction and audience in the West by publishing in journals from the Global North. However, many of the journals and books due to policies regarding open access, price of books published by internationally validated publishing houses, lack of academic initiatives by Indian universities to procure them remains inaccessible to students from the Third World. Out of the more than 1500 law teaching institutions in India, I wonder how many of them subscribe to good academic literature, particularly in international law.
Works of TWAIL thinkers like Antony Anghie, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Bhupinder Chimni, Upendra Baxi, Mohammed Bedjaoui, Christopher Weeramantry and James Hugo Gathii are gaining influence and significance in the development of modern international law. This is a result of years of hard work put in this direction. They have opened doors for young researchers from the third world to voice their opinion on international law and policies.
However, it is still concerning that in the traditional law schools in India, the contributions of Prof. R.P. Anand and Prof. V.S. Mani are rarely deliberated upon. As Prof. Chimni in his seminal paper, ‘TWAIL: A Manifesto’ writes “‘the threat of recolonisation’ has continued to haunt the Third World. Facing this reality, he puts it that a new set of tools had to be developed to ‘address the material and ethical concerns of third world peoples.’”
While writing this book, I was hopeful that the future of international law reforms and development will be proportional academic representation. The diversity of the geographical south and its rich civilizational values can accommodate democratic values in a global democracy. The geographical south will act as a centripetal force to attract academic debates and international institutions towards the region. In geopolitical terms, many concerns are challenging the coming together of the geographical south. For example, the presence of many ‘Asias’ within Asia, due to constant instability, lack of collective identity and internal divisions, however, academic deliberations can also lead to establishing common platforms to deal with common challenges.
My co-author has argued in her blog on ‘Navigating a Journey of Writing Through “Intellectual Settler Colonialism”’, that “[We] are carefully reminded that the geographical south (and not the ‘global south’) scholar becomes an authentic scholar only when her voice is platformed at a global north journal. Our minds, understanding, syllabi, and pedagogies are imperialised”.
While reading and researching (which became a ritual during this period) about critical legal studies and international law, one thing that caught my attention was why cannot ‘international law and capitalism’, ‘non-colonialism and international law’, ‘Afro-futurism’, ‘critical approaches to international law’, ‘queer theory’, ‘gender and international law’, ‘post-coloniality and decoloniality become a part of international law syllabus and pedagogy in India. There have to be concentrated efforts and academic push towards reforming the teaching of International law in countries like India.
I express similar feelings like Prof. Wayne Morrison who in his ‘Preface’ of his book ‘Jurisprudence: From the Greeks to post-modernism’ wrote, “my sense of dissatisfaction and acute frustration has not evaporated. In part, my own text has become the focus of frustration, as I came to realise the impossibility of creating a book. This book, is, of course, a compromise.” The task was endless and the work remains an unfinished project. One sense of satisfaction is that we have, however, explored some relatively less explored areas in international law. Our chapter on ‘Approaches to International Law’ analyses the realist, policy-oriented, liberal, feminist, Marxist approaches and the Fourth World Approaches to International Law (FWAIL).
Of the 19 chapters, the book contains chapters like ‘Nature of International Law’, ‘History of International law’, ‘Setting the Discourse on International law’ and ‘Approaches to International law’ that view international law, predominantly through an anti-colonial approach. Themes like ‘Sovereignty and International Law’, ‘Self-determination’, ‘Responsibility to Protect’ have been rarely dealt with by the Indian international law textbook writers.
The book offers two purposes, first to deconstruct the European norms of modern international law and international institutions. Second, to add impetus to construct an alternative structure of international law. This book is an attempt to offer a text for students and researchers of international law to serve as an introduction to the study of international law and also contextualise the efforts of the various TWAIL thinkers who have received little or no recognition by the Global North.
In terms of academic exploration and research, the book has opened me to countless academic papers and articles written by Third World scholars. In my limited exposure to Indian textbooks on international law, I have rarely seen many of these monumental papers finding references by the Indian textbook writing community. Works like Mochtar Kusuma-Atmadja’s ‘The Contribution of New States to the Development of International Law’ or James Thuo Gathii’s ‘The Agenda of Third World Approaches to International Law’ or R.P. Anand’s ‘Towards a New International Legal Order’ are unknown to many.
One such work that has left an irreplaceable impact on my understanding of international law is Antony Anghie’s book on ‘Imperialism, sovereignty, and the making of international law’. His work is rarely referred to as essential reading in the syllabi of Indian universities. This makes me wonder how deeply rooted has been the impact of imperialism on academia. The answer to the present crisis is to decolonise academia and disciplines like international law. If this book contributes even a cent to this process, for me the project reached fruition.
What I have learnt during the process is that a book is never a one- or two person’s journey. It is a collective effort and a result of sacrifices and compromises. I do not think that I would have been able to devote time to write and research for the book after hectic LL.M. lectures without the support of my batchmates. My comrades who unconditionally helped me during the stages of proofreading and editing do deserve a fair share of appreciation and credit. Home has always been a forest, and I have never seen my parents happier when they saw the cover of the book.
This book has been worked on in Mumbai, New Delhi, Lucknow, Mussoorie, Ladakh, Jabalpur, Bhopal, Thiruvananthapuram and Kanpur. I must admit that each location has left its own imprint. This again brings us back to the point Prof. Prabhakar Singh raises in his ‘Foreword’, “Why shouldn’t Indian cities and towns be treated as pivots of international law like London, New York, Paris and Berlin.” If this book encourages the readers to look at international law through an alternative perspective and helps them explore TWAIL, it will have succeeded in its limited aims.
(Adithya Anil Variath is a student of Master of Laws at Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur. He has recently co-authored a book ‘An Introduction to International Law’ published by Thomson Reuters.)
